So from Cuzco we planned to head North to Ayacucho in the Andes, but at the bus station we learned that some protests where blocking the roads out that direction, so we modified our plans to head northwest of where we were. Waiting for several hours we got on our bus early evening, unfortunately around midnight we hit the same protests we thought we were going to avoid. Additionally apparently the rumour that the roads are only blocked in the day were not true. After waiting until 4 in the morning the bus driver finally turned around and drove back to Cuzco. So beginning of day 2 we were in exactly the same place as the day before, trying to rework our route. This time we picked a 22 hour route that retraced our Southern route and came out to the coast. We arrived in Ica, dropped at the side of the road, not at the bus station, and in desperation decided to take a taxi to the nearby oasis Huacachina. surrounded by towering dunes in the desert, the oasis is a tiny dated resort town built for Peruvian elite, but now filled with backpackers and some Peruvian families

. While it wasn{t where we expected to be, we were happy to not be in a bus, and in a pleasant enough seeming place. While we were there we thought we better check our the town{s main attraction, dune buggying and sandboarding. Early evening we headed out onto the dunes in a nine person dune buggy, flying up and down the dunes. I don{t know if it was just that our driver was cray or if all the tours are like this, but if there was one thing that could wake us out of our bus stupor it was this. We flew to the peak of mountain like dunes and slowed is we peaked over the top, not able to see down the other side, then tipping the balance and racing down the other side, at what almost seemed like vertical angles. For what its worth the sandboarding (like snowboarding, but on the dunes) was good too, but the dune buggy was definitely the highlight.